In May 2024, Warner Brothers Discovery announced that two new Lord of the Rings movies were headed our way. All we knew at the time was that the first movie was The Hunt for Gollum. As information trickled out about that film, the second movie stopped being mentioned. Each time, I wondered if a second film was still happening. Well, it is! In honor of Tolkien Reading Day, Peter Jackson gave a HFG update. He also surprised everyone by bringing on J.R.R. Tolkien superfan Stephen Colbert for a special announcement. Colbert and his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, have been busy developing that second LOTR movie.

The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past will take place 14 years after Frodo, Bilbo, and company departed for the Grey Havens, but will cover the early Fellowship chapters that Jackson famously left out of the first movie. It will show us Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin’s encounters in the Barrow-Downs and with Tom Bombadil. These events happened when they were hiding from the Ringwraiths on their journey to meet Strider in Brie. The present day storyline will involve Sam’s now-grown up daughter Elanor (who was played by Sean Astin’s real-life daughter Return of the King) learning some big secret about the War of the Ring.

Warner Bros. has revealed that Stephen Colbert and his son are developing a brand new “Lord of the Rings” movie. The announcement came Tuesday night via the studio’s various social media accounts. Colbert, a vocal Tolkien fanatic, then explained that the plot of his movie will come from chapters of “The Fellowship of the Ring” that didn’t make it into Jackson’s 2001 adaptation.

“You know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me,” Colbert told Jackson. “But the thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in [‘The Fellowship of the Ring’] that ya’ll never developed into the first movie back in the day. It’s basically the chapter ‘Three Is Company’ [Chapter III] through ‘Fog on the Barrow-Downs’ [Chapter VIII]. And I thought, ‘Oh, wait, maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story. Could we make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies that you guys had already made?’”

The late-night host said that after coming up with this idea, he discussed it with his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, and worked out a “framing device” for the film. After the groundwork was laid, Colbert called Jackson, and over the last two years, they’ve worked with screenwriter Philippa Boyens to develop a script.

The film’s official logline reads, “Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.”

This new “Lord of the Rings” project marks Colbert’s first foray into blockbuster development. However, it is not his first collaboration with Jackson. Colbert had a small role in 2013’s “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.” He also directed Jackson, as well as “Lord of the Rings” stars Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen and Elijah Wood, in the 2019 short film “Darrylgorn,” which is set in JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

New Zealand-based screenwriter Boyens has a long history working with Jackson. She helped pen his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “fHobbit” films, along with Fran Walsh. She also co-wrote Jackson’s 2005 monster epic “King Kong.” McGee’s writing credits, spanning TV and film, include work on “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” “Outer Banks,” “The Righteous Gemstones” and “Blue Bloods.”

[From Variety]

Needless to say, the Internet has split reactions about this news, but a lot of Tolkien fan accounts seem excited about Stephen’s involvement. He’s a huge LOTR scholar that knows the source material inside and out. Personally, I think he’ll respect the original text, possibly to a fault. I truly believe that over the years, Colbert has been on the various LOTR subreddits and message boards and genuinely, enthusiastically wants to make a perfect movie for his fellow fans. I was there when he hosted the Rings of Power panel at Comic-Con. He clearly knows his stuff, but I hope he’ll put ego aside and listen to Jackson’s guidance.

I love that this will bring back Sam, Merry and Pippin. We haven’t seen them since The Return of the King! I know the Tom Bombadil and Barrows-Down chapters that were left out of Fellowship, but I don’t know what Elanor could learn that would trigger these flashbacks and tie them into the present day. There are some theories going around, but many of the ones that I’ve seen involve Tolkien going on record to name “The Shadow of the Past” (the second chapter in Fellowship) as “the crucial chapter” in the series. I know that every movie in a franchise tends to dilute each one beforehand, but I’m looking forward to what Stephen’s Tolkien-stan inspiration will bring.

In honor of Tolkien Reading Day and the destruction of the One Ring, we bring you a special announcement. pic.twitter.com/ufh9RLBIxO

— Warner Bros. (@warnerbros) March 25, 2026

Photo note by CB: This is one of the only photos I could find of Peter and it’s from 2014!

Embed from Getty Images

Photos credit: Jennifer Graylock/INFphoto.com, Getty Images and via YouTube